As transit systems throughout the world continue to mature, so do the technologies that support them. The transit industry traditionally has provided for fare payment collection using used “closed-loop” fare media, which has a readable memory that stores transit value or fare products. Recently, however, transit systems have been able to support the use of “open-loop” bank cards, such as credit and debit cards, which can be used to conduct financial transactions outside the transit system. This ability to allow open-loop bank cards to be used as fare media provides added convenience to transit users.
Enabling open-loop bank cards as fare media in a transit system can have drawbacks, however. It can often take several seconds or more to authorize payment from an open-loop bank card, which would cause unreasonable delays at turnstiles, fareboxes, and other access control points in the transit system with a high volume of transit users. Thus, payment authorization information typically is accomplished after a transit user has been granted access at an access control point. If payment authorization is declined, however, a transit service provider may not get payment for a user's access to the transit system. Furthermore, a transit system that simply denies a user access based on the user's use of an open-loop card that has been previously declined might be doing so needlessly if the card has since been restored to good standing.